Home > April 2014 > Intrepid Museum Honors Its Volunteers During National Volunteer Week

Intrepid Museum Honors Its Volunteers During National Volunteer Week

Posted:4/7/2014 9:09:06 AM

It’s National Volunteer Week and we’re excited to celebrate our amazing volunteers! Here at the Intrepid Museum we have more than 150 volunteers who have spent more than 16,470 hours this year helping out the Museum.

Intrepid Museum volunteers include teachers, history buffs and former crew members who served on board USS Intrepid. They represent almost all of the branches of the U.S. military and range in age from 18 to 94! Our volunteers greet Museum visitors as they come on board the ship, explain exhibits and aircraft information, tell stories of their time serving on Intrepid, work on aircraft restoration, and provide administrative and technical behind-the-scenes support.

We’ll be highlighting a few amazing volunteers throughout the week—be sure to check our Facebook page all week long!

We start things off with volunteer Tony Francica. Tony is one of our many volunteers who served on board Intrepid, so volunteering here, he says, "is like coming back home." Tony worked as an engineer on the forward auxiliary generator from 1968-1969, and then went on to submarine school and served on board USS Sea Wolf (SSN-575) with Submarine Squadron 16.

You can find Tony in the captain’s bridge once a week, and he encourages visitors to watch The Kamikaze Experience film on the hangar deck. "You really get a feel for being on board the ship as it was being attacked. It’s very moving."

Tony is pictured here on the left in the captain’s bridge with fellow volunteer John Perry.